1939: Mr. and Mrs.

Mr. and Mrs.

By Clarke Wales

The Sunday Press, October 08, 1939

Hollywood’s most famous newlyweds have settled down on the farm.

The cows and chickens see glamour in its unnatural habitat, and it all seems perfectly natural.

Your reporter refers to the Gables and the Taylors: Clark Gable (Pappy) and the Missus (Carole Lombard), Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck. The two couples live on three farms, which goes to show you that they aren’t fooling.

It isn’t just the general hegira of movie people to the farm that has led these newlyweds in pursuit of bucolic joys. Most of Hollywood’s farmers are still vaudeville troupers at heart, and their country residence merely means that they don’t live in hotels any more.

The Gables and the Taylors work at living on a farm instead of just living there. Gable lived on a farm back in Ohio until he was old enough to break loose from home and get a job in the oil fields. Taylor wasn’t exactly a farm boy, but he was born in a Nebraska town so small that on a clear that you can see all the inhabitants with one eye. Neither Miss Lombard nor Miss Stanwyck was a farm girl, but they have followed their husbands to the soil with enthusiasm. They are, it might be mentioned here, good wives.

To be exact, the homesites of the Gables and Taylors should be called “Ranches,” since in Southern California any home with a backyard and no carline in sight is called a ranch. Back where Clark and Bob were “brung up,” 20 or 25 acres would be called a “piece of ground.” But, by the same token, the distance of 15 miles between the two ranches would be called “a fur piece” back there, while in Southern California they are neighbors.

To reach these two farms, one travels out into “The Valley,” which is a famous expression in Southern California because “out in the valley” is where a lot of famous movie folks live.

You come onto the Gable-Lombard place first; it nestles in the curving lap of bare, brown hills near Encino, some 20 miles from Hollywood. It once belonged to Director Raoul Walsh and it served as many a setting for a motion picture scene, since Walsh used to rent it out as a location. When Gable and Lombard started talking about getting married, they bought the farm and completely remodeled the house. When renovations were complete, they hied themselves away last spring, got married and came home. As simple as that.

You turn off the six-lane highway known as Ventura Boulevard onto a dusty, country road when you go visiting the Gables. It is only a mile or so down this road and the first thing you see is a whitewashed fence, built of old railroad ties and tough timber. When you come to the gate, you make yourself known by a couple of honks of the horn and then the gate swings open, operated by electrical control from the Gable den. The gate looks as though it had been lifted from a Wyoming ranch.

The house itself, fitted into a curve in the hills, is of native rock, wide clapboards and long, mellow-brown shakes. It is best described as of Early American architecture. From the inside out, it is built for comfort and there is no piece of furniture that looks delicate. The house is full of big davenports, and the chairs are built so that the Gable frame can flop into them without disaster.

The living room is long with two huge davenports of a creamy yellow color and two high-backed red chairs. The rug is machine-woven, with long, soft nap. On the mantlepiece are two old fashioned oil lamps with an antique clock between. Adequately taking up an entire corner is a huge bowl in which Mrs. Gable keeps long-stemmed fresh flowers from her own garden. There are a couple of coffee tables, a lamp table and on these pieces are hammered-steel ash trays and other objects. An earthquake might knock everything in the room galley west but it wouldn’t break more than one or two objects.

The dining room is large with a huge, white, uneven brick fireplace above which hangs an old musket, flanked by copper kettles. At the side of the fireplace is a complete silver service. The kitchen is conventionally modern, and off the kitchen is a refrigerator room, large enough to walk into, built to keep the game which Gable brings back from hunting or fishing trips.

Off the left (as you enter) of the living room is the den, which the Gables call the office. There are the inevitable two comfortable davenports, also a desk with two telephones and books. From here the electric lock on the front gate is manned. Stepping out of this office, you come to the patio with garden furniture painted yellow and actually purchased from a New England courthouse.

To the right of the living room is Gable’s gun room. Three sides of the room are covered with glass-doored cabinets in which Gable keeps his forty-odd rifles, shot guns and pistols. Drawers below the cabinets contain other hunting equipment. The fourth side of the room is taken up by another specially-built davenport.

The two bedrooms are upstairs. Gable’s room has another built-in davenport and a desk. The bed is dark and the head is covered with natural leather.  At the bedside is a radio and telephone. Off the bedroom is a dressing room and the bath and beyond that is an attic closet where he stores things and keeps his rough clothes.

Miss Lombard’s room is the only feminine touch in the house. It is all in white and there is a canopy bed. There is also a huge dressing room and bath, all extremely feminine.

The Gables spend most of their daylight hours outside when not working in a picture. There you will find Carole in sun-specs, gardening gloves and a smock. If she wants Pappy, as she calls him, she goes to the back of the house, bangs on a metal triangle and Pappy gets off his tractor and comes clomping in, beating the dust of his clothes.

To arrive, he will pass the three-car garage where are kept the station wagon, the coupe and the sedan. They hire no chauffeur, He will also pass the stable where he has stalls enough for eight horses. One is Judy, the mule. Another is a Palomino, another a Western roping pony and the fourth is a riding horse. Cows take up two of the remaining stalls. The Gables use their own milk and have separators to provide their own cream. They even make butter.

The stable also has a tack room, with a couple of davenports and pegs for tack. Then there is a barn with huge hay loft. Downstairs, Gable keeps his horse trailer and at one end is a workshop where he has all kinds of tools. He does most of the repairing on the farm and likes to tinker with machinery. And, of course, there is the tool house for all the farm implements,. And that is the ranch.

The farm is unusually shady, because of the 700 trees. Gable has almost every conceivable kind of fruit tree. Two and a half acres of grapes stretch along the back of the place and a couple of the 20 acres on the ranch are used for truck gardening. The Gables raise almost all of their own vegetables. You will also find a large chicken house, with 1,000 chickens and several dozen turkeys, ducks and geese.

The farm raises its own dry hay and alfalfa and Gable runs it all with the aid of a hired man, Fred, who lives in a four-room cottage with his wife. Gable figures the farm pays for itself because of what they save on products. It sells only one commodity—fertilizer. Fred’s wife separates the milk, churns the butter and puts up fruit to last through the year.